Valentine's Day Gift For You -- The Economic Point of Viewhttp://www.coordinationproblem.org/2018/02/valentines-day-gift-for-you-the-economic-point-of-view.html
|Peter Boettke|<p><span style="color: #ffff00;">|Peter Boettke|</span></p>
<p>&#0160;</p>
<p><iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kDbcboJwuPc" width="560"></iframe></p>Peter Boettke2018-02-14T13:26:22-05:00Economics and the Publichttp://www.coordinationproblem.org/2018/02/economics-and-the-public.html
|Peter Boettke| Every since having the scales removed from my eyes back at Grove City College by the economic sermons from Dr. Hans Sennholz, I have been persuaded that the public purpose of economics is precisely that -- removing the...<p><span style="color: #ffff00;">|Peter Boettke|</span></p>
<p>Every since having the scales removed from my eyes back at Grove City College by the economic sermons from Dr. Hans Sennholz, I have been persuaded that the public purpose of economics is precisely that -- removing the scales from the eyes of the public. &#0160;In economic affairs, this means eradicating ignorance of not only how market processes, but how political processes operate as well. &#0160;So I studied in earnest how to study the economic forces&#0160;<em>at work</em> in a variety of institutional settings with the purpose of trying to explain clearly the costs and benefits of alternative public policies. &#0160;Of course, in talking about public policies we have to distinguish between policies chosen within any given political and economic system (say within the US democratic polity), and choices over political and economic systems (say the socialist Soviet Union or the fascist Germany). &#0160;But rest assured, public ignorance abounds in both exercises. &#0160;As Hayek argued in&#0160;<em>The Road to Serfdom</em>: &quot;Is there a greater tragedy imaginable than that, in our endeavor to shape our future in accordance with high ideals, we should in fact unwittingly produce the very opposite of what we have been striving for?&quot; (1944, 5)</p>
<p>When I first learned economics the reason primarily given for this predicament was that economic reasoning is hard, requires chains of reasoning that most are unwilling to follow, and the conclusions are often counter-intuitive. &#0160;But right there in&#0160;<em>Economics in&#0160;One Lesson</em>, Hazlitt also pointed out that policy thinking goes astray because of the power of vested interest groups who benefit from the policy at the expense of others. &#0160;So the basic logic of public choice was not alien to me when I first heard it for the first time, though to this day I believe ideology and ignorance are perhaps more critical issues than interests and rational ignorance. &#0160;I retain faith that if we economist do our job and explain clearly and concisely the logic of economic forces&#0160;<em>at work</em>, and expose the public to the true costs and benefits, and who gains and whose expense, then a lot of bad public policies would cease to find popular support, and even more so, certain cherished ideological beliefs would be abandoned. &#0160;Reason and Evidence, not Passionate Emotions and Primitive Intuitions, can be the guide to policy, and result in peace and prosperity and general human flourishing.</p>
<p>Yup, I realize that is a certain type of romance as well. &#0160;I believe scholars are truth-seekers, so economists are tellers of the truth, and if done to the best of their ability and with communication skills as good as humanly possible, the economist as student of society, as social critic, and ultimately as teacher can do their job to eradicate ignorance, and in doing so set democratic societies (through public opinion) on the successful path to address the social ills of poverty and squalor as well (as opposed to the frustrating path we have followed). &#0160;The public purpose of economics is to be great &quot;teachers&quot; of the economics forces&#0160;<em>at work</em>, and to be able to explain how alternative institutional arrangements either promote peaceful cooperation and productive specialization among individuals (the invisible hand) or frustrate the efforts to realize the gains from trade and stifle the efforts to realize the gains from innovation (dynamics of interventionism).</p>
<p>Things do get messy when we put the economists in the model, as Robert Tollison argued we must. &#0160;There we deviate from the truth seeker model, and view economists just like everyone else as interested parties who benefit from some policies at the expense of others. &#0160;In such a setting reason can be twisted, and evidence can be tortured, and the passionate emotions and primitive intuitions can be catered to even with the most seemingly rational and scientific of presentations. &#0160;The causality of this development is our understanding of the economic forces&#0160;<em>at work</em>&#0160;and the sort of policy regime that results in individual freedom, generalized prosperity, and peaceful social relations. &#0160;Rather than peaceful cooperation we get conflict, and rather than productive specialization we get sorting based on special privileges and connections to the powerful.</p>
<p>Yet, I don&#39;t believe that we in our democratic society, or those suffering in non-democratic societies, get the government that they want. &#0160;We get the government we get, and we get it for a variety of reasons, including physical force, but also public ignorance that does not equip the people with the &quot;intellectual weapons&quot; to mobilize public opinion against inefficient (and/or repressive) regimes. &#0160;But in these cases regime change is necessary, and economists can aid in that process if they do their job properly. &#0160;Economists are not saviors, they are students/critics/teachers, but if they do their job than their fellow citizens will have the capabilities to transform their societies. &#0160;Economists can equip their fellow citizens with knowledge, and that knowledge can be a powerful force for change, just as the lack of knowledge can be a powerful force used against citizens. &#0160;Ignorance is costly and its persistence means regimes can manipulate the masses and suppress opposition and exercise dominion over others for the benefit of a few. &#0160;Its our job as economists to counter this by empowering the public with knowledge of how the world works. &#0160;We are practitioners after all of the &quot;worldly philosophy&quot;.</p>
<p>My blunt force treatment of these issues makes it difficult to be subtle, and I realize the subtlety in scientific and scholarly discourse is a must, and without it the conversation can degenerate into unproductive directions. So I have to constantly seek ways to check myself -- to have a sort of impartial spectator ready on hand (or in my case my inner Don Lavoie on my shoulder). &#0160;The world is complex, and there are many parts moving at once and in different directions in human societies so the real-world appears to us as a muddle and unearthing the governing dynamics requires analytically a surgical precision with fine instruments of reason and evidence, and not blunt force instruments. &#0160;That is the <em>art</em> as well as the&#0160;<em>science</em> of economics and political economy.&#0160;&#0160;But down deep I am today as persuaded by the role that economics properly done can have on the public imagination as I was when I read my first economic works and listened to Dr. Sennholz&#39;s words for the first time. &#0160;The scales really did get removed from my eyes, and I want to in turn share the &#39;good news&#39; of economic science with other unsuspecting fellow citizens to eradicate public ignorance on economic affairs and in so doing set us on a more productive path to address other social ills such as poverty, squalor and idleness.</p>
<p>So when I read the following passage from Gordon Tullock -- one of the most hard-boiled public choice thinkers, socially irreverent, and in many ways the ultimate cynic of any &quot;feel good&quot; approaches to human affairs -- I cannot help but breath a sigh of relief because <em>even</em> Gordon Tullock thought this was our public purpose as economists.</p>
<p>&#0160;&#0160; <a class="asset-img-link" href="http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451eb0069e201b7c94f1ba5970b-pi" style="display: inline;"><img alt="IMG_0784" border="0" class="asset asset-image at-xid-6a00d83451eb0069e201b7c94f1ba5970b image-full img-responsive" src="http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451eb0069e201b7c94f1ba5970b-800wi" title="IMG_0784" /></a></p>
<p>Let us get on with our task of being students of civilization, social critics of policy regimes, and teachers to our fellow citizens. &#0160;We need to empower the people with knowledge. &#0160;That is, I contend, the public purpose of economics.</p>
<p>&#0160;</p>Peter Boettke2018-02-12T08:38:04-05:00Ostrom Workshophttp://www.coordinationproblem.org/2018/02/ostrom-workshop.html
|Peter Boettke| Last fall the Law and Economics Center at GMU held a conference on the contributions of Elinor Ostrom. I was one of the lecturers, and I greatly enjoy talking about the contributions to political and economic analysis of...<p><span style="color: #ffff00;">|Peter Boettke|</span></p>
<p>Last fall the <a href="http://masonlec.org/lec_new/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Booklet-Agenda-Mason-LEC-Workshop-on-Elinor-Ostrom-October-2017.pdf">Law and Economics Center at GMU</a> held a conference on the contributions of Elinor Ostrom. &#0160;I was one of the lecturers, and I greatly enjoy talking about the contributions to political and economic analysis of the Ostroms and even more so in attempting to apply their work to tackle problems of a conceptual and empirical nature.</p>
<p>The current director of the Ostrom workshop, Lee Alston, is an accomplished economic historian and political economist in his own right. &#0160;This video clip describes what he is trying to do with the Workshop.</p>
<p><iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aQGG5p1_icQ" width="560"></iframe></p>
<p>&#0160;The critical ideas to keep in mind in reading the Ostroms is that we are not prisoners&#39; caught in dilemmas, but instead human beings capable through our choices of improving our situation. &#0160;And, that the devil in the analysis is always in the institutional details. &#0160;Look at these two passages from Elinor&#39;s classic work&#0160;<em>Governing the Commons</em>.</p>
<p><a class="asset-img-link" href="http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451eb0069e201b8d2d91203970c-pi" style="display: inline;"><img alt="IMG_0766" border="0" class="asset asset-image at-xid-6a00d83451eb0069e201b8d2d91203970c image-full img-responsive" height="758" src="http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451eb0069e201b8d2d91203970c-800wi" title="IMG_0766" width="1011" /></a></p>
<p><a class="asset-img-link" href="http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451eb0069e201b7c94ea628970b-pi" style="display: inline;"><img alt="IMG_0725" border="0" class="asset asset-image at-xid-6a00d83451eb0069e201b7c94ea628970b image-full img-responsive" src="http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451eb0069e201b7c94ea628970b-800wi" title="IMG_0725" /></a></p>
<p>&#0160;</p>Peter Boettke2018-02-10T15:30:31-05:00Call for Symposium Papers - "Social Justice" - Independent Excellence Prize: $10,000http://www.coordinationproblem.org/2018/02/call-for-symposium-papers-social-justice-independent-excellence-prize-10000.html
Independent Excellence Prize: $10,000 "Social Justice" Call for Symposium Papers The editors of The Independent Review invite submissions on the topic of social justice for a special symposium to be published in 2019. Papers should explore, reassess and critique the...<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 13pt;"><strong>Independent&#0160;Excellence&#0160;Prize: $10,000</strong><strong><br /> &quot;Social Justice&quot;</strong><strong><br /> </strong><strong>Call</strong><strong>&#0160;for&#0160;Symposium&#0160;</strong><strong>Papers</strong></span></p>
<p><br /><span style="font-size: 13pt;"> The editors of&#0160;<em>The Independent Review</em>&#0160;invite submissions on the topic of social justice&#0160;for&#0160;a special symposium to be published in 2019.&#0160;Papers&#0160;should explore, reassess and critique the concept of social justice&#0160;-- relating it to on-going debates in&#0160;economics, history, philosophy, politics, public policy, religion and the broader culture.&#0160;</span><br /> <br /><span style="font-size: 13pt;"> We simply ask that submissions adhere to high standards of scholarly&#0160;excellence&#0160;and that the writing be intelligible and engaging to a diverse audience of thoughtful readers.</span><br /> <br /><span style="font-size: 13pt;"> If your&#0160;paper&#0160;is selected, it will be published in&#0160;<em>The&#0160;Independent&#0160;Review</em>. The number of&#0160;papers&#0160;to be published is not set, but will be tied to the quality of the submissions as determined by the editors of the journal. The editors will select one&#0160;paper&#0160;from the symposium to win the&#0160;Independent&#0160;Excellence&#0160;Prize, which carries a monetary award of $10,000.&#0160;</span></p>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: 13pt;"><strong>Paper</strong><strong>Length:&#0160;4,000-5,000 words</strong></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 13pt;"><a href="http://secure-web.cisco.com/1aIhjpBkAvIAwq2vCk-meE3fK_ePDNX7_qBdv0O4P6Arp_nOq6fEDrNFR4y9BhvVXcVsdvJWlNiKjK1vqKyry4LSxyXt5sF3qVf26TG49kx9v1JImwC0zADaWNugSmZaxykXvy160xVP_cgtWy1IthPQWlzgr38UBgdaOD9jdheu8npECYjg_FOcu7fMLwj6MgWB-dhg9f5jx1VKBddq-H-c-OLiQBySbQYC_zFuHBuD1ssr21WfidPG2NeN70dIwnbt2123OFgA_o-B3xN04QSONEqwjeNcS0zvOyVOjbU5RH3jCcOkJ1b2J7mbl7R-w78HDDRJFjOiQB9NvY0mc9DwTsmnnWMCdisDpG8N5y8O7ABzv8C0RsmwySQd8mpHF1VVZNSqRfX5rxn1Cbh4sx9rbO3YDfAxJGmBZMPG7TXhCJWghh_oSik5fgqnMtcX1/http%3A%2F%2Fdmanalytics1.com%2Fclick%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.independent.org%252Fpublications%252Ftir%252Fmanuscript_submission.asp%26i%3D5%26d%3DgtAc-aWyQm65cAJDEozR4g%26e%3Dwhaples%2540wfu.edu%26a%3D8IVlbGpzT428eG049oMHjg"><strong>Manuscript Submission Guidelines</strong></a></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 13pt;"><strong>Deadline:</strong><strong>December 15, 2018</strong></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 13pt;">Send Queries and Submissions:</span><br /><span style="font-size: 13pt;"> Professor Robert M. Whaples; Co-Editor,&#0160;<em>The&#0160;Independent&#0160;Review</em></span><br /><span style="font-size: 13pt;"> <a href="mailto:tirsubmissions@independent.org">tirsubmissions@independent.org</a></span></li>
</ul>Chris2018-02-08T16:01:16-05:00Social Experimentation and Social Progresshttp://www.coordinationproblem.org/2018/02/social-experimentation-and-social-progress.html
|Peter Boettke| "Liberty," Hayek argues in The Constitution of Liberty (1960, 29), "is essential in order to leave room for the unforeseeable and unpredictable ..." As he goes on in the next paragraph to argue: "Humiliating to human pride as...<p><span style="color: #ffff00;">|Peter Boettke|</span></p>
<p>&quot;Liberty,&quot; Hayek argues in&#0160;<em>The&#0160;Constitution of Liberty</em> (1960, 29), &quot;is essential in order to leave room for the unforeseeable and unpredictable ...&quot; As he goes on in the next paragraph to argue: &quot;Humiliating to human pride as it may be, we must recognize that the advance and even the preservation of civilization are dependent upon a maximum of opportunity for accidents to happen. &#0160;These accidents occur in the combination of knowledge and attitudes, skills, and habits, acquired by individual men and also when qualified men are confronted with the particular circumstances which they are equipped to deal with. &#0160;Our necessary ignorance of so much means that we have to deal largely with probabilities and chances.&quot;</p>
<p>Right before these passages, Hayek makes reference to the work of his former student and fellow Nobel Prize winner, A. W. Lewis who argued in&#0160;<em>The Theory of Economic Growth</em> that innovators are always in the minority, and that collective judgment of new ideas is so often wrong that progress depends on individuals possessing the freedom to go with their own judgement against collective disapproval. &#0160;And the worse outcome would be to give a monopoly of decision of authority to a government committee concerning economic progress and development. (see Hayek 1960, 427, fn. 9; and Lewis 1955, 148).</p>
<p>So what is Hayek arguing? &#0160;I would suggest he is arguing for competition and experimentation, and an&#0160;<em>institutional infrastructure</em> that not only permits but encourages such social experimentation. &#0160;We have learned that polycentric systems of governance provide such an infrastructure for competition and experimentation. &#0160;But much of the world lingering in poverty is trapped due to monopolistic governance structures that do not permit such experimentation. &#0160;What is the answer?</p>
<p>The most innovative answer -- not new to this audience -- is actually the &quot;charter cities&quot; intellectual innovation that Paul Romer initiated. &#0160;Romer is one of the most innovative economic thinkers of his generation. &#0160;And in my opinion, this judgement is not deterred by his recent <a href="https://www.economist.com/news/business-and-finance/21735716-world-banks-chief-economist-questioned-integrity-banks-research-his">difficulties at the World Bank</a>, but in fact, like his critique of<a href="https://paulromer.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Mathiness.pdf"> Mathiness</a> in Economics, make him even more interesting and in many ways courageous. &#0160;I certainly do not agree with every nuanced twist in his argument, but I am fully in agreement with the general thrust and overwhelmingly impressed with his courage of conviction in speaking truth to a very powerful profession and the elites in positions of power.</p>
<p>So Professor Romer returns to his position at NYU and his Urbanization project. &#0160;His idea on &quot;new&quot; cities combines the insights and wisdom from&#0160;<em>mainline</em> economics from Adam Smith to Vernon Smith as discussed in my&#0160;<a href="http://www.independent.org/store/book.asp?id=98#t-0"><em>Living Economics</em></a>, but also&#0160;<a href="https://ppe.mercatus.org/publications/mainline-economics-nobel-lectures-adam-smith"><em>Mainline Economics</em></a> and&#0160;<a href="https://ppe.mercatus.org/publications/applied-mainline-economics"><em>Applied Mainline Economics</em></a>. &#0160;What Romer does in my mind is combine his work on endogenous growth theory, with a more general framework and appreciation for entrepreneurship, and a deep understanding of how the structural rules of the game influence the nature and direction of knowledge creation and knowledge dissemination, and thus either the source of the wealth or poverty of nations. &#0160;Charter cities, as Romer explains in this talk, enable poverty stricken countries to experiment and to learn from that experimentation how to escape from poverty, and improve the lives of multitudes. &#0160;This idea, along with open borders, is in my opinion the most important ideas in development economics. &#0160;I have nothing in principle against the fashionable randomized controlled trial -- though I do think questions of scalability and sustainability should always be on the table. &#0160;But the development improvements that could be achieved through charter cities and free movement of people in my humble opinion are simply on a different scale in terms of the magnitude of the impact on the lives of citizens in those regions of the world.</p>
<p>Let liberty reign in those cities and let the accidents happen -- social experimentation is a pre-requisite for social progress.</p>
<p>&#0160;&#0160;</p>
<p><iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mSHBma0Ithk" width="560"></iframe></p>Peter Boettke2018-02-07T13:34:52-05:00Two Pages of Fiction http://www.coordinationproblem.org/2018/02/two-pages-of-fiction-.html
|Peter Boettke| F. A. Hayek published a wonderful short piece under that title in 1982 to explain the impossibility of socialist calculation. Hayek in this piece goes after Oskar Lange's supposed rebuttal of Mises and argues that Lange missed the...<p><span style="color: #ffff00;">|Peter Boettke|</span></p>
<p>F. A. Hayek published a wonderful short piece under that title in <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0270.1982.tb01416.x/abstract">1982</a> to explain the <em>impossibility</em> of socialist calculation. Hayek in this piece goes after Oskar Lange&#39;s supposed rebuttal of Mises and argues that Lange missed the point.</p>
<p>When Hayek published&#0160;<em>Collectivist Economic Planning</em> in 1935, he included an appendix that translated Enrico Barone&#39;s 1908 paper &quot;The Ministry of Production in Collectivist State.&quot; &#0160;Hayek, also, often pointed to Pareto&#39;s argument about the computational complexity of the mathematical solution whereas the market &quot;solves&quot; the problem without any central direction everyday. &#0160;Look at these two pages from Barone and read them carefully:</p>
<p><a class="asset-img-link" href="http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451eb0069e201b8d2d73736970c-pi" style="display: inline;"><img alt="Barone287" border="0" class="asset asset-image at-xid-6a00d83451eb0069e201b8d2d73736970c image-full img-responsive" src="http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451eb0069e201b8d2d73736970c-800wi" title="Barone287" /></a><br /> <a class="asset-img-link" href="http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451eb0069e201b7c94cca0b970b-pi" style="display: inline;"><img alt="Barone287" border="0" class="asset asset-image at-xid-6a00d83451eb0069e201b7c94cca0b970b image-full img-responsive" src="http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451eb0069e201b7c94cca0b970b-800wi" title="Barone287" /></a></p>
<p>&#0160;</p>
<p>Now, it is important to read these two pages to off-set the claim that Barone proved Mises wrong in advance -- Mises publishing his original article on social calculation in 1920, and Barone publishing this piece in 1908. &#0160;Barone isn&#39;t responsible for the &quot;fiction&quot; as Lange was, but those reading him were -- especially Abram Bergson and Paul Samuelson. &#0160;As Hayek wrote in &quot;The Competitive Solution&quot; (1940), &quot;The fact that is has never been denied by anybody, except socialists, that these formal principles&#0160;<em>ought</em> to apply to a socialist society, and the question raised by Mises and others was not whether they ought to apply but whether they could in practice be applied in the absence of a market.&quot; (see Individualism and Economic Order, 1948, 183)</p>
<p>So much confusion has indeed been caused by those two pages of fiction in Lange, but also repeated and repeated by subsequent generations down to this day.</p>
<p>Folks get tripped up in this debate (and I should say folks get tripped up on both sides) by failing to read closely the arguments that are being made. &#0160;&quot;Assume for the sake of argument&quot; is introduced by both sides to make points, it doesn&#39;t mean that they don&#39;t make the argument, e.g., Mises and Hayek on incentive incompatibilities of socialist organization, or Pareto and Barone on the reality of non-omniscience and dynamic economic adjustments. &#0160;To say that an omniscient body could under static conditions write down the optimality conditions is not at all the same thing as saying that any human economic system could be so structured. &#0160;In fact, as the words say no solution on paper is possible for such a task.</p>
<p>&#0160;</p>Peter Boettke2018-02-04T09:58:24-05:00The Philosophy and Practice of a Beautiful Gamehttp://www.coordinationproblem.org/2018/01/the-philosophy-and-practice-of-a-beautiful-game.html
|Peter Boettke| My love of the game of basketball far exceeded my ability to play the game. I had my hoop dreams in my youth, but my passion and love for the game has continued long after those hoop dreams...<p><span style="color: #ffff00;">|Peter Boettke|</span></p>
<p>My love of the game of basketball far exceeded my ability to play the game. &#0160;I had my hoop dreams in my youth, but my passion and love for the game has continued long after those hoop dreams crashed against the hard rock of reality. &#0160;As we economists like to say, there are endowments and there are choices against constraints, and those didn&#39;t line up for me to achieve as a player as I had hoped when I set off on that journey at 12. &#0160;But even as a player, I realized I would also would love to teach and coach the game. &#0160; When I had my chance as a kid to coach younger kids in clinics, or to work at basketball camps between HS and college, this was just reinforced. &#0160;So my expectations were always that I would finish playing in college and then coach. &#0160;I finished playing much earlier than I had hoped, and I started coaching much later than I had dreamed. But I did get to coach, and I coached kids from the ages of 8 to 18 for close to 2 decades. &#0160;And when I coached HS age kids, I often coached 12 months out of the year --- summer league, fall preparation, regular season, and spring training. &#0160;I even self-published a little booklet that circulated around Northern Virginia (thanks Peter Lipsey) targeted at 8th graders getting ready to make their HS teams the following fall entitled&#0160;<em>From March to November</em>, which was based on the coaching phrase -- Basketball is played between November and March, but basketball players are made between March and November.</p>
<p>I consider basketball a beautiful game on many levels -- athleticism, skill, but also the coordination involved, the creativity involved and the discipline that makes it all come together. &#0160;To this day, I probably watch upwards to 300 to 400 games a year. At my peak of coaching, I was coaching over 100 games a year easily and watching film, reading, or watching games live or on TV probably in the number of 500 or so. &#0160;Basketball is great because it is a TEAM game played by Individuals. &#0160;Coaches like to say, there is no I in TEAM, but as the great Michael Jordan once told his legendary coach Dean Smith, &quot;But Coach there is an &quot;I&quot; in WIN.&quot; &#0160;And Jordan certainly personified that and from his shot against Georgetown (set up by a teammate&#39;s pass) to his championships won with passes to John Paxton and Steve Kerr, to his steal and then individual move and mid-range jumper against Utah, he played the game with creativity within discipline, and exhibited not just unique athletic abilities, but superior fundamentals. &#0160;Jordan was a two-way superstar and we should not forget that -- EVER.</p>
<p>He also played that game with great joy -- just like Magic Johnson -- and with ruthless competitiveness -- just like Larry Bird. &#0160;So much to still learn from those 3 greats. But today&#39;s players at the college and NBA are no less a joy to watch compete so I do and I continue to enjoy creativity within the discipline even in the era of the &quot;one and done&quot;.</p>
<p>The game is actually pretty simple if you break it down to the DeVenzio rules: (1) the only time you should stand still on a basketball court is when shooting a free throw, otherwise moooove. Move the ball, move yourself, but move with a purpose; (2) pass the ball only to the kids with the same colored shirt as you, never the other colored shirts, if are going to do that at least throw it out of bounds; (3) take only easy shots, if you have a 15 foot shot, but a teammate has a 5 foot shot, pass to them; and finally (4) don&#39;t let the other team take easy shots, tackle them if you have to, you have 5 fouls to give, use them if you have to.</p>
<p>Ok, it is more complicated than that, but actually just in the details of offensive strategy (though the pick and roll has been around since, well probably since Naismith) and defensive strategy well there we get into interesting conversations about fanning or funneling, etc., etc., but fundamentally we want to make their 3 players have to beat our 5 players, and once they get the ball on one side of the floor, we don&#39;t ever want them to reverse so we force them into this 3 against 5 situation. &#0160;And since offensively we know that 3 against 5 doesn&#39;t give us the number, we want to make 2 of their players cover 1 of ours and thus switching the number advantage by driving and grabbing a piece of the paint, relocating in a position to shoot, picking and popping, as well as rolling, and basically making sure that we move the ball to 3 sides of the floor prior to taking a shot (so I used to like to track how many baskets my very competitive teams competing at an elite HS level scored off a pass versus off a dribble). &#0160;I religiously tracked that, plus turnovers, and rebounds. &#0160;Those reflected the goads I set for my team, and the measures helped me work on ways to improve. &#0160;Important point to note -- the measures didn&#39;t tell me what to value, they told me how well the team was doing at accomplishing the things as a coach I valued.</p>
<p>But that does raise an important issue, when you are watching the game on TV it is different than when you are coaching at HS with a random draw of talent. When you get to select your team from a wide selection -- as I did for my AAU teams -- or what college coaches do, and certainly what GMs do for professionals, you get to pick players for a system you want to run. &#0160;HS school coaches at the public schools should be given a lot more credit because they have to adapt to the random draw of talent they have, and their physical attributes, and cannot just impose their &quot;system&quot;. The best ones adapt and change and put teams on the floor that compete. &#0160;But elite coaches can pick pieces. &#0160;This again I think has gotten harder in the &quot;one and done&quot; era because you don&#39;t know how long kids will be around to learn your style of play, and one this is for sure, winning is a lot easier when you have the best talent available playing for you. &#0160;As the great coach Hubbie Brown used to put it in clinics, the secret to being a great coach is winning with less talent because, as he stressed, if you aren&#39;t winning with superior talent you might be a bad coach.</p>
<p>So when I was coaching and could select, I was looking for the following pieces of a puzzle --- a big man that would rebound and protect the rim and run from rim to rim on every play forcing the defense to collapse toward the basket, a power forward who was big wide and mean, a wing or small forward who was the best athlete on the squad, could slash to the basket, get out on the fast break, and play defense, and preferably someone who if not tall had length, then a shooting guard who could knock down the outside shoot and pass and play strong defense (this was my 180 shooter -- 50% from 2, 40% from 3, 90% from FT), and then finally a point guard who always had head up, was pass first, but always probing to grab a piece of the paint, and could be play defense to keep the opposing point guard not only out of the paint, but preferably making him turn at least 3 times on each possession as he tried to set up the opponents offense.&#0160;</p>
<p>Give me that team, and if I could have 2 players at each position, I would have a great team. &#0160;GREAT teams can play 10 players; good teams can play 7-8; mediocre teams can only play 5-6. &#0160;If you are choosing, try to get 10, and as you get to tournament time reduce rotation to 7.&#0160;</p>
<p>To me the most interesting team to watch at the moment as a work in progress is Duke, the team(s) most interesting to watch as works well on their way are Villanova and Virginia -- or Golden State and the Celtics. &#0160;Cleveland is a mess -- but that comes from too much isolation basketball in my opinion, and that is true for OKC as well, but San Antonio is undermanned this season, but at their best they are more like Golden State than Cleveland. &#0160;Coach K in my opinion has to get his kids to think like Golden State, and that falls in my opinion mainly on getting the 2 freshman guards to figure it out ... Trent has made more progress on this than Duval. &#0160;The keys to the bus have been put in Duval&#39;s hands, and he has shown flashes of brilliance but not consistency. &#0160;So right now he resembles more Trey Burke than Tyus Jones.</p>
<p>To other trivial philosophy to practical points. &#0160;Your goal should be that your practices and the time you spend in practice will be reflected in games, so organize accordingly because your team will reflect what you emphasize. &#0160;And winning basketball emphasizes unselfish TEAM offense, and disruptive TEAM defense, and your players all should exhibit superior fundamentals. &#0160;Watch Duke play defense -- terrible; watch Duke play offense, at times brilliant at other times all relying on individual talent to make plays (which because they are unique talents they can). Now watch Villanova or Virginia play -- they play the game the right way.</p>
<p>Hard work beats talent whenever talent fails to work hard. &#0160;The margin of talent difference among the elite programs is so slight, so if there is any element where the players aren&#39;t working hard (and they might not even know they aren&#39;t because they have never been taught and this is especially true on the defensive end) it will be exposed. &#0160;I suspect Duke will lose 5 games during the regular season, but I also predict due to Coach K&#39;s amazing talents as a coach that they will cut down nets this year. &#0160;If they don&#39;t it may very well be Coach K&#39;s most underperforming team in his illustrious career. &#0160;They do have a non-existent bench to date, but he just needs to get to 7 deep by tournament time. &#0160;Watching this master teacher try to get his players to come along as they must is one of the most intriguing story lines of this year in college basketball in my mind.</p>
<p>Basketball is a beautiful game, next time you watch it, see if you can see it through this former coaches eyeglasses. &#0160;Look for the creativity within discipline. Look for the teams that play hard, player smart and exhibit joy in the game.* &#0160;Sports, in general, but basketball in particular because of its long history of playground or pick-up culture, is also a school of rules. So it can be a great &quot;controlled&quot; experiment in constitutional economics. &#0160;Basketball has been under-studied compared to baseball.</p>
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<p>*This post was inspired by watching GMU versus VCU; then the last part of the Duke vs. Virginia game; and then the Celtics vs. the Warriors. &#0160;All in the context of a day spent discussing political economy with graduate students from 9-12:30 and then from 5:00-6:30. &#0160;I trust Ben Powell will appreciate this post -- he shares my passion for the sport.</p>Peter Boettke2018-01-28T13:59:15-05:00Theory and Historyhttp://www.coordinationproblem.org/2018/01/theory-and-history.html
|Peter Boettke| The Spring 2018 term begins at GMU today. We have some exciting speakers coming to our Workshop in PPE. The CSPC Wed seminar schedule has also been posted, as well as the schedule for the ICES seminar. So...<p><span style="color: #ffff00;">|Peter Boettke|</span></p>
<p>The Spring 2018 term begins at GMU today. &#0160;We have some exciting speakers coming to our <a href="https://www.peter-boettke.com/ppe-workshop/spring-2018/">Workshop</a> in PPE. &#0160;The <a href="https://www.gmu.edu/centers/publicchoice/wed%20seminars/wedsem_Spring2018.htm">CSPC Wed seminar</a> schedule has also been posted, as well as the schedule for the <a href="https://ices.gmu.edu/seminars/seminar-schedule">ICES seminar</a>. &#0160;So lots of economic ideas bouncing around at GMU and I haven&#39;t even mentioned <a href="https://www.mercatus.org/commentary/conversations-tyler">Conversations with Tyler</a>, which includes a conversation with Martina Naratilova -- who is much more than one of the greatest female athletes of all time.</p>
<p>I am teaching 2 graduate classes this term -- Comparative Economic Systems (Econ 676) and Constitutional Political Economy (Econ 828). &#0160;These are actually the courses that I came back to GMU in 1998 to teach and have loved the experience with them each time. &#0160;In both classes, a critical aspect is to discover how to engage or operationalize the insights from the theoretical perspectives explored into an empirical research strategy. &#0160;How to do Theory &amp; History. &#0160;And, though I don&#39;t assign the book, the students are getting in some sense my spin on Mises&#39;s masterpiece on this --&#0160;<em><a href="http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/mises-theory-and-history-an-interpretation-of-social-and-economic-evolution-lf-ed">Theory and History</a></em>, which was originally published by Yale in 1957.</p>
<p>In my <a href="https://www.atlasnetwork.org/news/article/context-continuity-and-truth-theory-history-and-political-economy">recent Liggio Lecture</a>, I try to argue that in this age of scientism among&#0160;<em>economic</em> historians, and post-modernism among&#0160;<em>historians</em> of capitalism, it may be more important than at any time for economists to rise to the challenge and find the appropriate way to engage in theory &amp; history. &#0160;Economic historians who forget history in their professional striving to be economists, and historians who produce histories of economies without any working knowledge of economics both are doing the field of political economy a disservice that must be corrected.</p>
<p>Given prevailing biases this is a great challenge, but with all great challenges there is also great opportunities. &#0160;My colleague Mark Koyama has had good success at cracking in decent professional journals with strong economic history contributions, but he has also written some <a href="https://medium.com/@MarkKoyama">brilliant essays on Medium</a> that should not be overlooked. &#0160;Mark practices theory &amp; history. &#0160;As does my close colleague Pete Leeson. &#0160;So read them, read Mises, and ... read also my close colleagues Chris Coyne, Virgil Storr, Ben Powell, Ed Stringham and David Skarbek and you will get a good glimpse of what a comparative historical political economy research program can provide. &#0160;And, yea, I guess I would recommend that you read me as well.</p>Peter Boettke2018-01-22T10:33:00-05:00Stateless Commercehttp://www.coordinationproblem.org/2017/12/stateless-commerce.html
|Peter Boettke| Barack Richman's new book is an outstanding work on the analytics and empirical examination of comparative institutions of governance, and in particular the private governance of diamond trade in NYC. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. We...<p><span style="color: #ffff00;">|Peter Boettke|</span></p>
<p>Barack Richman&#39;s new book is an outstanding work on the analytics and empirical examination of comparative institutions of governance, and in particular the private governance of diamond trade in NYC.&#0160; I cannot recommend this book highly enough.&#0160; We just had a <a href="https://ppe.mercatus.org/events/stateless-commerce-diamond-network-and-persistence-relational-exchange">great book panel discussion</a> on it, and along with the work of Pete Leeson, David Skarbek, Edward Stringham, etc., this is a foundational work in the field of governance and the political economy of everyday life.</p>
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<p>&#0160;</p>Peter Boettke2017-12-07T16:45:36-05:00Knowledge Lost in Informationhttp://www.coordinationproblem.org/2017/12/knowledge-lost-in-information.html
|Peter Boettke| Bruce Caldwell reviews Mirowski and Nik-Khah at EH.Net. Highly recommended. My Presidential address to the Society for the Development of Austrian Economics from the 2001 meetings also addresses this question of what is lost in translation between Austrian-Hayekian...<p><span style="color: #ffff00;">|Peter Boettke|</span></p>
<p><a href="http://eh.net/book_reviews/the-knowledge-we-have-lost-in-information-the-history-of-information-in-modern-economics/">Bruce Caldwell reviews Mirowski and Nik-Khah</a> at EH.Net. &#0160;Highly recommended.</p>
<p>My <a href="http://www.gmu.edu/depts/rae/archives/VOL15_4_2002/boettke.pdf">Presidential address to the Society for the Development of Austrian Economics</a> from the 2001 meetings also addresses this question of what is lost in translation between Austrian-Hayekian rendering of knowledge and the neoclassical-Hurwicz/Stigler/Stiglitz rendering of information. &#0160;This is a theme I have addressed a number of places before and since that essay, including my paper with <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2336805">Kyle O&#39;Donnell</a>, as well as the recent <a href="http://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/lm-hayek">Liberty Matters on Hayek</a>.</p>
<p>The Mirowski and Nik-Khah book is very interesting and raises a lot of important points, but the book is strangely confusing on Hayek, and to some extent they use me to promote their confused reading on Hayek. &#0160;There should really be no confusion on this issue, especially if you read not only Caldwell, but Kirzner and Lavoie as part of your secondary literature. &#0160;And to be honest I have been in my mind quite clear on this throughout my career as well, though I did use the occasion of the Nobel to the mechanism design thinkers to discuss Hayek&#39;s influence, and when we did celebrate Hayek&#39;s Nobel we did invite one of those Nobel Prize winners to discuss how Hayek impacted that work. &#0160;There is no denying that Hayek influenced Hurwicz and others in their quest to find an economic system design that would be informationally efficient. &#0160;But that was&#0160;<em>not</em> Hayek&#39;s main point. &#0160;Mirowski and Nik-Khah would have done well to have listened to Vernon Smith&#39;s response to Erik Maskin that day at GMU. &#0160;Maskin was discussing the &quot;information space&quot; and the informational requirements required for efficiency, whereas Vernon in describing his market experiment pointed to Maskin at one point showing the picture of his groping market processes over 3 rounds and said &quot;There is the information space, and none of the participants knew a damn thing&quot;. &#0160;See the knowledge within the market was both emergent and contextual. &#0160;Now that might be overstating it a bit given the way Smith&#39;s market experiment is designed, but the critical point is that this was the theoretical idea he was attempting to capture.</p>
<p>Go back to my discussions referenced above and you will see this point consistently emphasized. The knowledge of the market isn&#39;t merely decentralized and dispersed, it is emergent and contextual and without that context it isn&#39;t difficult to mobilize, it is rather non-existent. &#0160;This knowledge that defies the sort of treatment required to fit it into an information-theoretic account either by Hurwicz, Stigler or Stiglitz.</p>
<p>Anyway, it is my sincere hope that the Mirowski and Nik-Khah book will get folks thinking about these issues and explore these literatures rather than serve as a faithful guide to the issues and interpretation of these literatures. &#0160;The book, as Caldwell points out, has a bigger purpose -- one that is ideological in nature, and that is to tar neoliberalism, and with that Hayek as the quintessential leader of the neoliberal thought collective. &#0160;This aspect of the project makes for interesting reading as any such wild conspiracy story would, but it does not advance knowledge in the social sciences nor provide a scholarly intellectual history of modern economics and political economy. I take that just to be a call for more serious work and to simply try to enjoy the Mirowski habit of the &quot;all-knowing wink&quot; and &quot;fanciful story-telling&quot; masquerading as serious scholarship. &#0160;You can learn a lot from his works, but even dating back to&#0160;<em>More Heat Than Light</em>, the reader has to always be on alert for the interpretative leap and wild implication drawn. &#0160;So warned, again, there is a lot of learn starting with the brilliant title chosen --&#0160;<em>The Knowledge Lost in Information</em> -- if only they understood that the greatest casualty of this translation difficult was Hayek and the culprit was correctly identified by Hayek as scientism, what a story indeed could be told.</p>Peter Boettke2017-12-04T14:23:31-05:00Some Links that May Be of Interesthttp://www.coordinationproblem.org/2017/12/some-links-that-may-be-of-interest.html
|Peter Boettke| There are two programs this summer that those interested in the intellectual history of political economy ought to seriously consider applying for: (1) The Center for the History of Political Economy Summer Institute run by Bruce Caldwell, and...<p><span style="color: #ffff00;">|Peter Boettke|</span></p>
<p>There are two programs this summer that those interested in the intellectual history of political economy ought to seriously consider applying for: (1) The Center for the History of Political Economy <a href="https://hope.econ.duke.edu/2018SummerInstitute">Summer Institute</a> run by Bruce Caldwell, and (2) the Hoover Library and Archives <a href="https://www.hoover.org/library-archives/collections/hoover-library-archives-workshop-political-economy">Workshop on Political Economy</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.mruniversity.com/courses/principles-economics-macroeconomics/business-cycles-austrian-economic-theory">Tyler Cowen</a> has recently posted a video on the Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle, the presentation is straightforward and covers the basics (though not the subtleties), and the criticisms are worthy of a thorough response or concessions by proponents of the theory. &#0160;Though I have to admit that I find it strange to think of any theory of economic phenomena that isn&#39;t grounded in price theory as fundamental, and the Austrian Theory as Cowen correctly points out is a price theoretic explanation.</p>
<p>And, along those lines, <a href="http://deirdremccloskey.org/docs/pdf/McCloskey_CheungianEconomics.pdf">Deirdre McCloskey</a> recently attended a conference in honor of Steven Cheung, and she was asked to provide some further elaboration on Cheung&#39;s contributions to economics and the implications. &#0160;I also found this essay by <a href="http://deirdremccloskey.org/docs/pdf/McCloskey_FogelAndNorth2016.pdf">McCloskey on getting over naive scientism</a>&#0160;and its relationship to the work of Fogel and North to be very interesting.</p>
<p>&#0160;</p>Peter Boettke2017-12-04T09:05:59-05:00When Government Fails, Superstition May Have the Answerhttp://www.coordinationproblem.org/2017/11/when-government-fails-superstition-may-have-the-answer.html
Glimpse how; learn why.<p>Glimpse <a href="https://capx.co/when-government-fails-superstition-may-have-the-answer/">how</a>; learn <a href="https://www.amazon.com/WTF-Economic-Peter-T-Leeson/dp/1503600912">why</a>.</p>
<p><a class="asset-img-link" href="https://capx.co/when-government-fails-superstition-may-have-the-answer/" style="display: inline;"><img alt="image from capx.co" border="0" class="asset asset-image at-xid-6a00e54fae2dcb883401bb09d52209970d image-full img-responsive" src="http://a1.typepad.com/6a00e54fae2dcb883401bb09d52209970d-800wi" title="image from capx.co" /></a></p>Peter Leeson2017-11-08T10:19:47-05:00Can You Handle Getting Schooled by the Strange?http://www.coordinationproblem.org/2017/10/can-you-handle-getting-schooled-by-the-strange.html
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<p>&#0160;</p>Peter Leeson2017-10-30T19:47:01-04:00Interview with 14-Year-Old Aspiring Economisthttp://www.coordinationproblem.org/2017/10/interview-with-14-year-old-aspiring-economist.html
Read it here.<p>Read it <a href="https://ceterisnumquamparibus.blogspot.com/2017/10/prof-peter-leeson.html">here</a>.</p>
<p><a class="asset-img-link" href="http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451eb0069e201b8d2b90fb8970c-pi" style="display: inline;"><img alt="Cigarpic" border="0" class="asset asset-image at-xid-6a00d83451eb0069e201b8d2b90fb8970c image-full img-responsive" src="http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451eb0069e201b8d2b90fb8970c-800wi" title="Cigarpic" /></a></p>Peter Leeson2017-10-29T10:49:17-04:00Lu Challenges Youhttp://www.coordinationproblem.org/2017/10/lu-challenges-you.html
Learn about the "Mises-Was-Right" challenge. Take the challenge.<p><a href="https://fee.org/articles/take-the-mises-was-right-challenge/">Learn</a>&#0160;about the &quot;Mises-Was-Right&quot; challenge.&#0160;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/WTF-Economic-Peter-T-Leeson/dp/1503600912">Take</a>&#0160;the challenge.</p>
<p><a class="asset-img-link" href="http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451eb0069e201bb09d1075d970d-pi" style="display: inline;"><img alt="Mises_9" border="0" class="asset asset-image at-xid-6a00d83451eb0069e201bb09d1075d970d img-responsive" src="http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451eb0069e201bb09d1075d970d-800wi" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Mises_9" /></a></p>Peter Leeson2017-10-26T11:49:46-04:00